Category Archives for S

… peak performance leaders give up the right to play to their strength. They have discovered, usually painfully, the truth about leadership styles. They know that leadership styles cross a spectrum bounded on one side by “collaborative leadership” and on the other by “command and control leadership.” They know that there styles in the middle of the extremes that blend to two at different levels.

More than knowing that the spectrum exists, peak performance leaders know that to lead anything, they have to be committed to mastering the leadership styles across the spectrum. Perhaps they are more comfortable with one style than the others, but they also know that any strength taken to an extreme becomes a weakness…

How do you know which leadership style to use in which situation? Here are some leadership styles to use in the four primary decision-making processes.

Command and Control – Use this style in urgent, high-stakes situations when you need to make a quick decision.

Informed Command and Control – Use this style for lower-stakes, but still urgent decisions. An example is if your company needs a meeting venue and you have hours to make the decision. You need some input, but ultimately you need to make a decision quickly.

Limited Consensus – This style is appropriate in low-stakes strategic planning, like when you’re deciding on your company’s benefits package for the year.

Consensus – This is when collaborative leadership comes into play. Use this style for high-stakes strategic planning and visioning when you need the group to come to an agreement on a long-term idea.

Read more at … https://www.inc.com/chris-mcgoff/why-you-need-to-master-multiple-leadership-styles.html

Dodge aired a commercial for its Ram truck series during Sunday’s Super Bowl featuring a portion of a sermon from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that has drawn a backlash on social media. The decision to allow King’s sermon to be used was made by his estate.

The ad begins by noting that King delivered the sermon – known as “The Drum Major Instinct” – on Feb. 4, 1968, 50 years ago today. In the same sermon, delivered the same year he was assassinated, King also advised people not to spend too much on cars.

According to Stanford University’s reprinting of his sermon, this particular sermon was an adaptation of the 1952 homily ”Drum-Major Instincts” by J. Wallace Hamilton, who was a well-known, white liberal Methodist preacher at the time.

Here is the text from the sermon that was used as a voice-over in the commercial:

“If you want to be important – wonderful. If you want to be recognized – wonderful. If you want to be great – wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. . . . By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great . . . by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. . . . You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know [Einstein’s] theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

His sermon, delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where he was a pastor, referenced the biblical passage Matthew 23:11-12, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”

… What the Super Bowl ad doesn’t include is the part from King’s sermon where he warns against the dangers of spending too much when buying a car and not trying to keep up with the Joneses.

“Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford,” King said in his sermon. “But it feeds a repressed ego. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of $5,000, your car shouldn’t cost more than about $2,500. That’s just good economics.”

King concluded that sermon by imagining his own funeral, saying he wanted to be remembered for doing good deeds, including serving others. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of King, who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968…

Read more at … http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2018/02/dodge_martin_luther_king_comme.html

Commentary by Professor B: Students sometimes ask how many resources they should be using in their classroom discussion and their homework. I recently responded to a student that “the real key is to show that you’re developing ideas from a number of sources.” Here is the reason why this is important in graduate school:

Hello,

I’ve given some suggestions, but there really are no requirements. The suggestions I have given are: one to two textbooks and 2 to 3 outside sources for a B. So a person with an A might use more than that.

But the real key is to show that you’re developing ideas from a number of sources.

So as you go through your discussions during the week, be checking around the Internet and finding juried sources that give you ideas how to tackle each week’s problems.

As you know, I have put together a research site (www.churchhealth.wiki) with links to almost 3000 articles that you can search by keyword. This should help you with a shortcut to juried research that other students have found or that I have found.

But I’m here to help … so I don’t want to be inflexible with the number of sources. Rather just connected with different sources on each week’s topic and create a synthesize plan. That shows not only that you created a unique solution, but also that you’r using higher levels of thinking to do it.

Like this:

Commentary by Professor B: No one said English was easy. But it does sometimes become very logical. My students may want to consult this helpful “flow chart” when writing their papers to avoid grammatical errors with apostrophes.

Like this:

Commentary by Prof. B.: Most weeks and in most courses, I put a link to my video introduction to the weekly assignments and give hints for getting more out of the course, its readings and its homework. The video below is an introduction to the entire MDiv course, titled: LEAD 600: Congregational Leadership.

I have created many postings/videos to help you. And, you can easily use “keywords” to find the help you need:

Search for the keywords “Student Success” if you have a question about assignments, due dates, attendance, etc.

Search for something like “Intro. to LEAD 600 assignment _____________” to find video introductions to most weekly assignments. Thus, each week use the key words “LEAD 600” along with a “key word” relevant to the weekly topic (e.g. “ethics,” “strategic leadership,” “budgeting,” etc.) to find specific video introductions to most weekly assignments

Search when you need information, not all at once. I give you a lot of information because I want to help you as much as feasible.

And, because I have provided a lot of information, don’t try to read or watch all of my postings at once.

Rather, each week and when needed use keywords to find more information as you need.

So, use keywords like “LEAD 600,” in this wiki to find more hints about how to make the most out of this learning experience. Plus, you can also look ahead to postings and videos on upcoming assignments.

Welcome to the learning journey. I hope you can tell from my enthusiasm that I look forward to participating with you in this educational experience.

And download my chapter titled “Graffiti” regarding the importance of multicultural churches found in the book ORGANIX: Signs of Leadership in a Changing Church (Abingdon Press) here: ORGANIX Chpt 4 GRAFFITI Pg059082

Still, I have grown tired and cynical at watching churches spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on new sound and lighting systems to approximate a rock concert and “attract” a crowd when similar churches just a few miles away are struggling to stay open in lower social economic communities.

This article from The Washington Post highlights the research by Robert Putman which should be a warning to growing and healthy churches that Jesus admonition still holds today: “Much will be demanded from everyone who has been given much…” Luke 12:48.

Why so many empty church pews? Here’s what money, sex, divorce and TV are doing to American religion

By W. Bradford Wilcox, The Washington Post, 3/26/15.

One of the tragic tales told by Harvard scholar Robert Putnam in his important new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” is that America’s churches have grown weakest in some of the communities that need them most: poor and working-class communities across the country. The way he puts it, our nation’s churches, synagogues and mosques give children a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose — in a word, hope — that allows them to steer clear of trouble, from drugs to delinquency, and toward a bright and better future, warmer family relationships and significantly higher odds of attending college.

The tragedy is that even though religious involvement “makes a bigger difference in the lives of poor kids than rich kids,” Putnam writes, involvement is dropping off fastest among children from the least privileged background, as the figure below indicates.

Courtesy of Robert Putnam, “Our Kids.”

In “Our Kids,” Putnam assigns much of the blame for the unraveling of America’s religious, communal and familial fabric to shift from an industrial to an information economy. The 1970s saw declines in employment for less-educated men, divergent incomes for college-educated and less-educated men, and a “breathtaking increase in inequality” — all of which left college-educated families and their communities with more financial resources, and poor and working-class communities with fewer resources. The figure below, taken from Nicholas Eberstadt’s essay on men’s employment, shows that work dropped precipitously for men in the 1970s.

(Courtesy of U.S. Department of Labor)

A key reason that working-class men are now less likely to attend church is that they cannot access the kind of stable, good-paying jobs that sustain a “decent” lifestyle and stable, married family life — two key ingredients associated with churchgoing in America.